Technorati tags: Skype SMS beta, Skype zones beta, sms skype friends, skype services

 

Now get ready to get in touch with your Skype contacts from where ever you are and SMS them if they are not online or on the move.

Skype has come out with two new services Skype Zones beta and Skype SMS Beta.

Skype Zones beta allow you to make calls from more than 18000 Skype friendly internet hot spots round the world. Skype zones is powered by Boingo, The Skype zones allows you to chat with your friends whereever you are say at a cafe or at the airport, Skype zones always helps you to connect with your friends.

 

Right now Skype zones beta is in the testing phase and is avialable only for Windows XP and Windows 2000.

Skype zones are not free and you will have to shell out € 2.50 ($2.95) for 2 hours or can get is for &euro 6.50 ($7.95) for a whole month.

Skype SMS beta is another service that allows you to send an SMS to a skype contact who have entered their mobile numbers to their profile.

 

Its a quick and cheap way to get in touch with friends who are not online or on the move.

This is also not a free service and you will have to buy Skype credits to use the Skype SMS beta, the rates are different per SMS for each country.

To use Skype SMS beta you will need to download and install the Skype 2.5 Beta software.

 

Source: momb  

 

If you are using outlook for multiple accounts then you know that it gets messy when you recieve lots of mails in the day, tagging your mails allow you to organize them better and make it more search friendly, as you easily specify the tags your looking for rather than searching independent mails.

As most of you may already have seen the buzz about tags and how they are helpful in sorting and searching data easily, oraganize informaiton nicely, and communicate more clearly to others what the information is about.

Taglocity is a add-in application for Microsoft Outlook, just like ieaddons in Internet Explorer and Extensions in firefox. Taglocity allows you to tag your email, tasks, contacts and calendar easily.

 

 

Taglocity helps you with

AutoTags Taglocity learns from how you tag and adds tags automatically to your content. This uses a similar technology to spam AI filters, and learns from your actions to improve in accuracy over time.

TravelingTags Taglocity allows your tags to travel to other people you send and receive messages from. These tags can help clarify your intent of the message, as well as serve as useful shared information to collaborate around. Powerful aliasing allows you to match up your tags with other peoples.

Search Tags Taglocity uses Microsoft's Windows Desktop Search to present a tag-based query feature. This allows you to find things very quickly in the context of your tags.

Taglocity is currently an invitation only beta testing, and you can get to download the application or join beta by sending them a email to join them.

 

Source: momb  

 

Update: Note this is not a Official Microsoft Release and only a preview release of the  actual software that is available with Softpedia which also has an Official mention on the Microsoft site related to Windows Media Player 11. 

 

 

Microsoft has officially released the Windows Media Player 11 on Wednesday, the Microsoft download link for Windows Media Player 11.

 

This release of the Windows Media player has a better usability experience and also has better hardware and software support.

 

The Media Player 11 has lots of nice features like Stacking, WordWheel, Back and Forward Buttons, New Cd Burning feature and a new feature called URGE;

The line between what's on your PC, a plugged-in portable device, a CD, or network computers, and what's obtained from the Internet is seamless and invisible to the user. This integration will forever change the way music lovers experience music. URGE will change it, too.

 

 Entire Feature list of the Windows Media player 11

One of the problems with older versions of Windows Media Player is that if you have a lot of music, browsing through the titles is cumbersome. Sure, smart playlists help, as does grouping by genre or rating, but titles aren't really denoted graphically. Some of the coolest new features of this version turn all of that on its head.

Stacking

With stacking, you can see graphically how many albums you have in a specific category of music. The more items you see in a stack (category), the larger the pile. Categories for stacks include genre, artist, and album. Changing the interface from a long list of titles to a graphic representation not only makes the interface more pleasing to the eye, but also makes understanding, navigating, and managing your music easier.

WordWheel

Digital music collections are getting larger and larger. With a large collection comes that first inevitable memory lapse. Believe it or not, there will come a time when you can't remember the name of an album, the artist, or the name of the song you want to hear. So Media Player 11 offers a way to instantly find exactly what you want.

Specifically, Windows Media Player 11 includes the Windows Vista WordWheel search functionality, incorporated right into the Media Player Library. Just type part of the artist's name, song title, or genre—whatever you can remember. The Library smartly “prunes” through your entire collection with a query across relevant fields and offers up what it thinks you're looking for.

Back and Forward Buttons

The new Back and Forward buttons do just what you'd expect them to do. They make using the player more Internet-like, and offer a simple way to browse the interface or return to something you were doing, viewing, or listening to earlier. This Internet feel seems quite natural and intuitive.

New CD-burning features

How much space is left on the CD you plan to burn to and whether you have enough room for one more track has always been a guessing game. Worse is creating the ultimate playlist only to find that it won't fit on the CD. With the new Burning Progress Bar in Media Player 11, that's over. The bar is a graphic representation of how much space is left on the CD. The progress bar gets longer as songs are added to the playlist. When the bar reaches the end of the graphic, the disk is full.

If you have the ultimate playlist but it won't fit on one CD, you can burn it to multiple CDs. With Multiple Disk CD Burning, you'll be prompted that the music won't all fit, and then prompted to put in another CD when the first one is full. Now that's progress!

Tip: Media Player 11 has multiple views. In addition to Album view, there are Year, Songs, Genre, Contributing Artist, and Composer views.

URGE

The line between what's on your PC, a plugged-in portable device, a CD, or network computers, and what's obtained from the Internet is seamless and invisible to the user. This integration will forever change the way music lovers experience music. URGE will change it, too.

URGE

URGE is a new MTV music service that lives right below your personal music library. It, along with everything else, is seamlessly integrated. With URGE, you can purchase and download individual tracks or purchase a music subscription. And you can use all of the cool new Media Player 11 features with URGE just as you can with your own music; you can stack, use WordWheel, navigate in various ways, and more.

With URGE, you can subscribe to particular feeds, too. You can subscribe to a feed for a specific artist, for instance, and specify that you want to download music, get updates, or get information about that artist based on your preferences. URGE has a local library of over 2 million tracks, and music syncs easily with portable devices. Of course, you'll get the usual rich album content, artist data, and radio art, too. It blows me away that through Media Player 11, I can browse, organize, and play over 2 million songs just like the songs are my own local content!
Stay informed and up to date

One of my major gripes about older versions of Media Player is that I never really knew what was going on during a task. Wasn't buffering finished yet? How's that sync going? Will all of this fit on a CD? And which songs can I put on there, based on the song's license? Why won't this song sync to my MP3 player? This version of Media Player has ended these aggravations with Global Status and Sync Status.

 

Global Status

No matter what the task, Windows Media Player 11 can tell you in an instant what's going on. With the Global Status feature, you can easily find out how buffering is coming, what song is currently being synched, how CD ripping is progressing, and more. Finally, no more guessing!

Sync Status

Synching music to portable devices is an important part of any media application. The new synching features in Media Player 11 can play hardball with the best of them. Just plug in your device and click Start Sync. You'll see the songs to be synched listed, with a progress bar for each one. You'll always know how much more there is to go, and what the current progress is. Plus, if any song can't be synched, the player gives you a reason for it.

Tip: Manual synching is simple; just drag items from your library to the sync list, and when you're done, click Start Sync.

 

You can check the entire feature list of Windows Media Player 11. 

This is a beta. No guarantees are made on the data or the service.

You can submit your created gizmos or widgets etc to BBC Backstage . BBC Web API for programmers page has more information on how to use the service.

 

They have integrated a few features that makes the search as fast as your web searches.

Some of the features from the new Windows Desktop Search, i liked are the Fast search with the better indexing of files.

Here are the entire list of features from Windows Desktop Search

Find Information Fast
Windows Desktop Search helps you find the information you need from the thousands of documents and e-mail messages located on your PC in seconds, improving your productivity. 

Search from Familiar Interfaces

Works seamlessly within Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office Outlook and offers you familiarity, convenience and ease of use.

Easy to Deploy and Manage

Enables IT managers to quickly deploy, manage and extend across the enterprise.

Search Across All Common File Types

Finds results from more than 200 common file types (e.g., e-mails, documents, images, music, video, .pdf).

Search from Where You are Working
Enables you to quickly initiate searches from where you’re working within your PC whether it’s in the Windows desktop, Outlook or Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Privacy Protection
Adheres to Windows security and privacy model and doesn’t index sensitive data such as temporary internet files and cache.

Powerful Sorting/Filtering
Refine and categorize results quickly using simple buttons and menus.

Preview Files
Displays helpful summary information in each result as well as clear graphical representation (with the reading pane or thumbnail previews & icons.

Manage Files
Move, delete, copy, drag & drop files with one click.

Send Files
Easily send new e-mail, reply or forward directly from results.

Open and Run
Access files in their native applications or launch applications directly from results.

Polite Indexing
File index is built and updated during idle time so user productivity and system performance are not affected.

Though I am still a big fan of Google Desktop and I like it pretty nice as it has lots of features and I like the sidebar particulalry with Windows Desktop Search lacks.

 

Technorati Tags: Windows Desktop Search, Desktop Search, Windows Search, Desktop Beta, Beta Releases